Workshop: Doing Research on the Middle East Seven Years After the Arab Spring: Conditions of Knowledge Production and Methodological Considerations

Seven years after the Arab uprisings, new research fields have been explored and several funding opportunities have been made available for scholars working on the Middle East. However, access to data is becoming increasingly difficult in many countries because of political blockages or ongoing conflicts. The impossibility or the risk to enter the field, the brutal murder of the young researcher Giulio Regeni in Egypt, in January 2016, are all examples of the uncertainty and the threat to research. This seminar aims to discuss the challenges, the obstacles and the opportunities researchers are encountering while practicing research on the Middle East. It focuses on the conditions of knowledge production in times of rapid transformations. Pascale Ghazaleh (AUC/ EUME) and Aymon Kreil (Ghent University) are invited to discuss how the current situation affects their research practice and what it entails with respect to the role of their disciplines.